Mavericks Invitational webcast draws more than 1 million viewers, crashes site

HALF MOON BAY -- The Mavericks Invitational website crashed Sunday because more than 1 million people tried to watch the webcast, the contest's technical staff said.

Jay Johnson, chief executive officer of Dana Point-based Action Sports Productions, which produced the webcast, said it came down to servers and bandwidth that were not equipped to handle the load. He said he tried to warn contest organizers of potential problems, but they did not anticipate such a crush of viewers and didn't have enough equipment.

"It was their first event as a group, and they'll get a lot of experience off that," Johnson said Monday. "I was actually blown away by how hard the site was hammered," he added, considering the contest had such a small marketing campaign.

Fans with some tech savvy found their way to http://live.redbull.tv, which carried the webcast, along with Surfline.com. Johnson said he set up the Red Bull partnership at the last minute and was glad he did. That site worked for many users on mobile devices and computers during the event because it has more stable infrastructure.

"If it wasn't for that, we would have been in major disarray," Johnson said.

Although MavericksInvitational.com was down for much of Sunday, on Monday it was back online with a nearly two-hour video of the semifinals and finals of the contest.

Tuesday, the site is expected to have a Heat Analyzer similar to the O'Neill Coldwater Classic website and other Association of Surfing Professionals contests. In that format, users can see individual wave scores and navigate through heats.

Also, a one-hour package of the Mavericks Invitational is expected to air on CBS in late January or early February, potentially on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 3, contest staff said.

Many fans around Santa Cruz County said they were frustrated with the live webcast on Sunday.

Ed Dickie, a 54-year-old artist from Davenport, said he tried to watch on the contest's website, then searched for alternate sites.

"The main website was down most of the contest, but the stream was active just on other sites," Dickie said. "If you had some web intuition, you could find it. Red Bull worked fine for me."

The site carries live feeds of various action sports, including snowboarding, motocross and BMX events.

Another glitch for online fans Sunday was the results announcement.

For those who tuned in to the final, the commentators said the results would be posted on the Mavericks Invitational Facebook page.

They were posted more than an hour after the contest ended, and when they did, the second place and fourth place finishers were swapped mistakenly. It was fixed later.

The results were announced incorrectly about the same time at the festival site in front of hundreds of fans. After the event ended, media representatives were told that Zach Wormhoudt actually got second place and Alex Martins came fourth.

Peter Mel won, followed by Wormhoudt, Greg Long in third, Martins in fourth, Mark Healey in fifth and Shawn Dollar in sixth.

Despite all those challenges and less-than-giant surf conditions, fans flocked to festival and Pillar Point Harbor.

The Mavericks Invitational festival sold out with more than 12,000 fans, and more than 30,000 people flocked to the Half Moon Bay area, authorities said.

Highway 1 near the event was snarled with traffic for most of the day.

San Mateo County sheriff's deputies said that unlike previous contest days, there was little trouble. One person was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and there were a few calls for medical help.

"Imagine having a whole city on the coastside for the day, but there was almost no trouble," said San Mateo County sheriff's detective Rebecca Rosenblatt.

During the last Mavericks event in February 2010, at least 15 spectators were injured as waves rushed ashore and knocked them into the water. The water killed the PA system and swept off several booths and tents.

In response to that chaos, the 2013 permit banned spectators from the beach.

Police said some fans tried to defy the new safety rules on Sunday, but in general people obeyed. The crowd also was forbidden from the Pillar Point bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but a few fans watched the surfers from the crumbly cliffs.

Bay Area News Group reporter Joshua Melvin contributed to this report. Follow Sentinel reporter Stephen Baxter on Twitter at Twitter.com/sbaxter_sc